'Ah,' because you'd given me the clue I was looking for. You were a very
clever journalist, I should think."

"Isn't that rash on half an hour's acquaintance?"

"You're forgetting your play--for the first time since it was produced!
I felt that, however bad it was as a play, it was first-rate journalism.
I've told you that I kept thinking how clever of you it was to write it.
You mustn't think I didn't enjoy myself. The construction's quite
tolerable, and the dialogue's admirable--not a word too much, not a
syllable put in for 'cleverness,' no epigrams for epigrams' sake. And
you've got a good sense of the theatre."

"I was a dramatic critic for some years. Hence my good press."

"Ah! Well, I felt that night that, if you weren't too old and set, you
might live to write a really good play." He bowed slightly. "Have you a
cigarette? I hate people smoking in the middle of meals; but Margaret's
begun, and I must have something to drown it. Now _that_, I suppose,
would be called an ironical bow, wouldn't it? I mean, in your stage
directions? You must guard against that kind of thing, you know."

"I will endeavour to do so, Lady Barbara."

"'Try,' not 'endeavour.' And you mustn't talk like your own characters;
you've no idea how debilitating that is. It's bad enough when you try to
drag us into the world of your plays, but it's intolerable if you try to
drag your plays into our world. Did you ever read a story about a boy
who lost all sense of reality by going to the theatre too much? He
became dramatic. He slapped his forehead and groaned---- Well, we
_don't_ slap our foreheads or groan, however great the provocation. And
in moments of stress he would shake hands with people and turn away to
hide his emotion. And it wasn't only in gestures, he became dramatic in
conduct. When compromising letters came into his hands, he used to burn
them unread and without any one looking on, which is manifestly absurd.
I forget what happened to him in the end, but I expect he was charged
with something he hadn't done to save the husband of the woman he wanted
to marry--and whom he'd have made perfectly miserable, if she hadn't
taken him in hand very firmly at the outset. And he'd have insisted on
having all their quarrels in her bedroom."

Barbara seemed to have talked away her listlessness. The champagne had
brought colour into her cheeks and eyes. Eric looked at her with new
interest, waiting for the next abrupt change.

"I'm not